Standard professional CM

[Guest guest]

 

 

When I coined the term " standard professional Chinese medicine " several years

ago, it was in order to identify a particular style of

Chinese medicine yet avoid using the term TCM. In Chinese, people just say zhong

yi, Chinese medicine. However, when Chinese

people translate this, they typically say " Traditional . "

Unfortunately, some Westerners, who did/do not understand

this style, have glossed TCM to mean " eight principle " Chinese medicine, which,

at least in terms of my reading, education, and

experience, it is not, or not solely. Other Westerners who did/do not understand

the contemporary history of Chinese medicine have

identified this style as Maoist or Communist medicine, another overly simplistic

misrepresentation. Therefore, I was looking for a way

of indicating the state-sponsored style of CM which forms the core curriculum at

PRC municipal and provincial CM colleges and

universities. I coined this term with three things in mind. One, it is a style

of Chinese medicine as opposed to Western medicine,

Ayurvedic medicine, Unani medicine, or Tibetan medicine. Two, it is a literate,

professional style of medicine, not a folk style. And

three, it does have written standards. In the PRC, there are national standards,

provincial standards, and, in large cities like Shanghai,

municipal standards. These standards are constantly evolving, but, at any given

time, there are standards to this style which have

been arrived at by multiperson colloquia. In China, these standards are

published and " freely available " to all interested parties.

 

All this being said, A) I would hate to see people saying " standard professional

TCM, " and B) I hate the acronym SPCM. Do we really

need another acronym? It's it the reductionist tendency that manifests in the

use of such acronyms that's part of the problem?

 

In the January 2004 issue of Blue Poppy's On-line CM Journal, we will be

publishing an article by Volker Scheid on the development of

Chinese medicine in the mid-20th century by such folks as Ding Gan-ren, Qin

Bo-wei, Cheng Men-xue, and Zhang Ci-gong. This

article is an excellent view into the creation of standards within modern

standard professional Chinese medicine. However, this

movement towards standardization of professional CM began no later than 1747

with the publication of the Qing dynasty's Yi Zong Jin

Jian (The Golden Mirror of Ancestral Medicine). In fact, you could say that

books such as Sun Si-miao's Qian Jin Yao Fang (Essential

Formulas [Worth] a Thousand [Pieces of] Gold) and Qian Jin Yi Fang (Supplemental

Formulas [Worth] a Thousand [Pieces of] Gold)

were efforts to standardize CM at the time they were written, and that there

have been a long series of constantly evolving " standards "

within professional (ru yi, literate) Chinese medicine.

 

Bob

[Guest guest]

Thanks, Bob, I am glad you added your clarification. I must say that

the term 'SPCM' doesn't go down very well.

 

Enjoyed your post, and I agree with your point of view about an

evolving 'standard'. I think we can move forward with this discussion.

 

 

On Nov 12, 2003, at 3:04 PM, Bob Flaws wrote:

 

> All this being said, A) I would hate to see people saying " standard

> professional TCM, " and B) I hate the acronym SPCM. Do we really

> need another acronym? It's it the reductionist tendency that manifests

> in the use of such acronyms that's part of the problem?

[Guest guest]

, " Bob Flaws " <

pemachophel2001> wrote:

 

>

> All this being said, A) I would hate to see people saying " standard

professional TCM, " and B) I hate the acronym SPCM. Do we really

> need another acronym? It's it the reductionist tendency that manifests in the

use of such acronyms that's part of the problem?

 

I made an error on the first account and was using shorthand due to my poor

typing on the second account (which did correct the first error, though). I

dount anyone is going to adopt the term SPCM anyway. :-)